Wrinkles in bottom of pool.

[Bama Rambler]

Ok it's my turn to ask for help! A couple of months ago a few wrinkles started developing in the bottom of my AGP. I wasn't happy about it but I decided to live with it because I didn't want to drain the water. I tried the plunger trick and wasn't able to move them.

Fast Forward to Saturday Morning. I went out to the pool and there is an almost continuous wrinkle across the middle of the pool. The other ones are still there too. It's about ½" of material folded up (¼" height). I was in the pool Friday evening and there wasn't a change in the number or size of the wrinkles.

Now the info:
It rained Friday night and Saturday Morning.
The pool temp went from 93º to 87º in a few hours.
The liner is sitting directly on a piece of slick bottom material kinda like a gorilla bottom but slick. It has no sand under it.
It has a foam cove.
The liner is less than 2 years old.
It had only 1 very small wrinkle (less than 3" long) when it was installed.
The pattern of the liner appears to be stretched where the floor piece meets the wall piece.
My test results are:
pH = runs almost constantly at 7.5. Has only risen to 7.8 a couple of times.
FC = 3 to 6 for months
CC = always less than .5
TA = 70 to 80
CH = 120 to 130
CYA = 30 to 50 Sitting at 35 right now.

These are ranges over the last year. I don't think it's chemical related. I also have some fading but I feel sure it's from the sun because it's not faded under the steps and there's excellent circulation under them so if it was chemical it'd be faded there too.

Help!

 

[waste]

Bama, sorry you're having this issue!

Sounds like water is washing under the liner and wrinkling it (you mentioned rain).

Check out this thread from last year

BTW - you often have to take a bunch of water out of the pool for the plunger to work, just too much pressure with it up :|

 

[Bama Rambler]

Thanks Ted, That thread made a lot of sense.

The ground where the pool sits is pretty flat but the pool isn't raised at all. It'll be easy for me to trench a swale out around the pool and resod it to divert the water away from it and down the hill. I'll go ahead with the swale but I'll probably wait a little later in the year to drain water out of the pool and reset the liner unless you think I should do it sooner.

 

[waste]

The #1 question is, how old is the liner?

If the liner has lost it's elasticity due to age (or chemical abuse, which I KNOW you wouldn't do) a partial drain might cause more damage than the wrinkles :x

On a fairly new liner, you should be able to still get the wrinkles out at the end of the season, however- you do want to do it on a 60*+ day

 

[Bama Rambler]

The liner is less than 2 years old and it'll probably be in the 80's here when I get around to draining and working the wrinkles out. Heck, the way this year has been it may still be in the 90's! Worse case scenario is that I"ll have to replace the liner.